Sotto Voce
by honeyblood
Summary: [Massive rewrite-repost. Post 'Sex, Lies, & Videotape. Bosco character study.]. Come help me out cause I'm sick from the fight - from inserting a laugh where there's none - show me where this joke got tired - tell me you know cause I'm slow catching on..


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**Title:** Sotto Voce

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Third Watch, I simply own the TV that I watch it on.

**Rating:** R, language and a little bit of violence (if you watch the show you can handle it)

**Summary: **Come help me out cause I'm sick from the fight / from inserting a laugh where there's none /show me where this joke got tired / tell me you know cause I'm slow catching on ... (the Frames, "happy").

**Foreword:** Smack-dab in Season 3; people, time to brush up on your roots! Post 'Sex, Lies Videotape' Bosco character study; 'He said/she said' references. There are some important notes at the end of the fic. Um, UST, angst in large doses and in this case the PWP stands for point? What point.

**Suggested Play List**: The Stills, 'Gender Bombs'; The Killers, 'Mr. Brightside'; Modest Mouse 'Satin in a Coffin'; Wondermints, 'Knowing you, Knowing me'; Interpol, 'C'mere'; Tom Waits, 'I'm Still Here'; Tom Waits, 'Watch Her Disappear'; Keane, 'Everybody's Changing'; Elbow, 'Ribcage'; Radiohead, 'The Bends'

* * *

"He was my friend, faithful and just to me;" 

_Mark Antony, Act III, scene ii, line 88._

_Julius Caesar / Shakespeare_.

* * *

"Cosi fan tutte?" 

(1. so do all (women); 2. what else can you expect from a woman?)

_Italian _

* * *

"Humanum est errare." 

(to error is human.)

_Latin_

* * *

**1. Anybody**

If he could pick anything, looking back on the moment in the locker room, he'd say that the thing that has killed his heart still beating in his chest is the way she'd just stood there. That is the thing that had really gotten to him; the calm stance, the unmarred brow. That lack of motion more than anything else, really. She just fucking stood there. He was her partner for Christ's sake and she just stood there, clutching her worldworn backpack to her chest and staring at him doe-eyed, uncomprehending.

**

* * *

**

**2. the Lying Kind**

"I didn't want to dump my problems on anybody," she says.

Okay, except, well, he isn't just fucking _anybody_.

He is so mad when she says this; so furious that his vision is reduced to bloody pinpricks and his hands are shaking like two uneasy Teutonic plates pushing against one another. He hides this by rolling his fingers into pale-knuckled fists and grinding his fists into his thighs. Bosco does this because he knows that if he doesn't, neither he nor she will like where they end up. He is so angry right now that it isn't even going to be funny looking back on it. For just a moment, in this small dark wound of a room, he wants to _do_ something to her.

The darksick part of him that he keeps locked away in the tightest corner of his heart wants to hit her; wants to cut her up in some physical way so the hurt he feels in his gut manifests on skin. He wants to pick her up and shake her until her head snaps on her neck. He wants to make her feel just a tenth of the shock (and the betrayal because she is always telling him that they need to talk and not keep secrets and _trust_ and blah, blah, blah and _how goddamn dare she do this to him because she could get them killed/get him killed/die_) she has caused him to suffer. It's an ugly thing made all the uglier by the weight of feeling; by the recognition of emotion.

She has made him into his father, and for a moment he hates her for it.

So Bosco hides his clenched fists at his side and he is careful not to move. He has scared her, he can tell, because she recognizes some of his dark-haired penitent-eyed monster peering over his shoulder with a malicious grin and sour breath. It alarms her, and rightfully so. He is glad, abhorrently glad, and he thinks; _Good_.

She's frightened, he thinks strangely pleased, then; good.

He has managed to terrify her. He's never done that before; never made her afraid of him, not once in all the years that he has known her, partnered with her. And he is so happy about it that his heart swells in his ribcage and presses against his throat, stopping his breath. God, he reels. Oh god; oh Holy Father—he begs well aware what this road leads to and he is so scared of going down it—please, please, _please_. For a moment, between his horror and his rage, his throat contracts and he wants to be violently ill, as if by ejecting the contents of his stomach he will rid himself of this vile feeling. He feels his gut twist and forces himself to hold down the bile. He _wants_ her to be afraid of him.

She is scared and he is _glad_ of it.

Some part of him is weeping inside his skull.

Bosco hates himself in this moment more than he has ever hated himself in his life (and that's saying something because he is a good lapsed Catholic and everyone knows that Catholics prize guilt and self-flagellation almost as much as their rosaries). Long ago, when he was barely tall enough to reach for the valium on the bathroom shelf, he'd made a vow that he'd never hit a woman; that he'd never _want_ to hit a woman. He knows that men who resort to fists and boots are stupid and dogs.

He's seen his mother's face painted in black and blue and violetbruised enough to know that is not the kind of man that he wants to be.

And anyway, he has always prided himself on being above his family, on being above the bars and the cheap stink of alcohol and the red-eyed thick-voiced shouting the morning after. Bosco hates that this is the reaction his anger forms for this woman who means so much to him; he fears the reaction—fears that it is something hardwired into all the Boscorelli men that he will not be able to escape. For tonight—even if only for just a New York minute—he wanted, still wants, to hit a woman, this woman; his woman, his partner. He wants to so badly that he thinks if he stares hard into her wide iceblue eyes long enough, ignores the shaking fists at his sides long enough, he can unmake the moment, take back the thought and make it never have happened.

He wants to pretend that it didn't happen. He wants to cover his eyes and ears—hear no evil, see no evil—and as silly as he knows it sounds, he wants to be able to count to ten like he and Mikey had when they were kids and Dad was in one of his rages and Mom was crying and they'd count hard and fast and loud, so when they opened their eyes everything was good again. He closes his eyes, even though he knows that it will be fruitless because counting to ten never really works anyway, and pretends that he is somewhere else.

(One, two, three, four, fuck; it isn't _working_.)

However, Bosco is not stupid nor is he a liar (well, hehheh, there are some who'd disagree; his humor is gallows humor black as tar and twice as hideous). He knows—and this is the shameful part—it _has_ happened. He is very sure even if he will never admit it aloud; just as he is sure that the skin across his cheeks is tight and his throat is sore, something else he will never admit to either.

He will admit, however, that right now he hates Faith. He hates her for her faithlessness in him (she should have told him right off—she should have _told him_), and he hates himself for his gut reaction to it.

She just fucking _stands there_.

Jesus _fucking_ Christ.

* * *

**3. Well that is that and this is this / You tell me what you want and I'll tell you what you get / You get away from me (1)**

Trying to unlock his car he considers, with some part of his chest and head that is not still fogged with wrath and self-loathing, how the entire situation is funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange, funny odd. Fumbling with his car-key, he thinks about earlier and how it all started, but how he hadn't seen it coming.

Because, because he'd been only slightly pissed off with her earlier (which was sorta funny in itself—ha, ha—considering that she'd just let him get _shot_ for chrissake and that always rattles a man), but—for the most part—he'd been cool with it (kind of. Sort of. Not really). After all, she had told him over and over earlier (_we should lay low today; I'm not feeling too good; we should call for back up; Bosco pull the damn car over I'm going to be sick)_ that she wasn't feeling well.

And she _had_ tried to talk him out of playing hero; no one could say she hadn't made the good old collage try, but like so many other times he just thought it was Faith being a nag. His nag, certainly, but a nag none the less and hadn't listened. With the radio blaring orders and the sirens streaking cobalt and crimson through the exhaust fumes that clung to the streets, he'd gallivanted off to save the day; wanting for once to do his job if only because Faith didn't.

He should have listened to her then (hell, his sensible side told him sharply, he should _always_ listen to her). This was just as much his fault as hers, he'd acknowledged in the locker room while struggling out of his Kevlar vest (thank you god for bullet proof vest; at least until he could learn to dodge speeding bullets) and standard blues—because of his pig-headedness, he now had one more bruise to add to his collection. He hadn't used his head; those were the breaks. He was an adult, and he was well aware that he had fucked up just as much as she had. The stupid woman, he'd scoffed pulling his gym bag from his locker; she was always playing down her health, or lack of it.

Still, despite the biting tenderness in his shoulder he had to smile. It was always more than a little amusing keeping Faith in a state of guilt; she almost always bent over backwards trying to make it up to him when she felt guilty about something (that was her fault, of course; if the root of his problem stemmed from something stupid _he'd_ done—well, she had absolutely no sympathy for him, the heartless woman).

So while he'd dressed, he had been planning on putting her out of her misery and telling her that he wasn't (very) mad, and that it was _partially_ his fault and that there was no harm done and that, ah shucks, did she want to go grab a cup of coffee before heading home? 'Cause it was already midnight (shift ran a bit later than the usual three to eleven) and he was sure Fred wouldn't mind because he would already be asleep, right?

Struggling with the buttons on his cotton dress shirt (really, he despairs amused, the _one_ day of all the days he wanted to be a little classy) he had been working out precisely what he was going to say, so he didn't really notice when she came to stand hesitantly at the end of the row beside him. And he certainly wasn't paying attention to the look on her face while trying to stuff the odds and ends of his daily gear back into his locker while at the same time not move his aching shoulder too much.

"They found a lump," she had said causally as a way of opening. Just four words; strung together they formed a coherent sentence. Just four words, but upon hearing them they hadn't registered. A _lump_? A lump of what? And they? They who? Certainly not _him_. He shook his head frustrated; it wasn't making any _sense_.

He wanted to say, what's the punch line? Because this joke isn't fucking funny, but his throat wouldn't unclench.

"Bosco," she'd hissed impatiently upon his uncomprehending stare. "_They found a lump_."

Oh _Jesus_, he'd gagged, unable to speak as the phrase crashed through his head like a meteor, suddenly making sense. With the comprehension came images; cool lunargreen hospital corridors and the sickly sweet scent of illness, glistening silver steel scattered about rooms like Christmas tinsel and that god-awful stillness that wandered halls like ghosts. His tongue had lain thickly swollen in his mouth, suddenly desertdry, as if that appendage had absorbed all the words in that cavity leaving behind only ashes.

Instead of speaking, he'd listened in a creeping red haze as she'd explained, ever so nonchalantly to him, how she'd, how'd _they'd_, found out and about how she hadn't wanted to dump her problems on someone else. On somebody who wasn't really _involved_. About how it wasn't a big deal and about how the chemical treatments that she was taking were just going to make her a little sick for a while. And that was when he'd formed those shaking fist and wanted to hit her, or hold her, or yell at her, or just do _something_.

However, there was nothing left for him to do; _Fred_ had been there for her.

**

* * *

**

**4. Mr. Brightside (2)**

Fred Yokas, he supposes, is not a bad man.

Hell, Bosco will even admit (grudgingly, and so not willing to analyze the why behind it) that Fred was almost-sort of-kinda his friend, once upon a time eons ago, while he had helped Faith with her marksmanship and she had cribbed notes for him, helping with the book-work he thought utterly pointless ("Yeah, sure the criminals will be more than willing to wait for us to check the manual for proper procedure," he sneered. "Just shut up and do it," she threatened patiently). The older man had worked any shift that was available to him, enabling Faith to focus on her academy work and on Bosco himself. He had not complained about the long hours his wife spent with another man nor the cold empty space in his bed; he watched their young daughter when Faith couldn't.

Sure, he had a few beers when it was late and he was lonely (Faith having confided these choice bits of information to Bosco in a fit of insecurity, hating the long hours stolen away from her family. She worried that she was driving her husband to drink and Bosco told her that she wasn't opening the cans for the man so stop worrying and forget about him). Fred is the preverbal Good Man; Bosco knows that he—with his self-absorption—doesn't even compare.

Fred is a hard worker, and a good father; gruff, but able to display affection when it counts, and he should know. Faith has extrapolated on both the man's faults and merits more than once.

However, as much as he may or may not have liked the man, Fred was, _is_, still a delivery man for god's sake. His wife is a cop, and those two worlds were never meant to meet. It is impossible for Fred to understand Faith the way Bosco does, if only because they are partners and Fred is not in that particular picture. It's that simple.

And it's not like its Fred's _fault_ or anything; for after all, though he is a good man he isn't a cop. So it isn't fair to expect that he would understand that partners tell each other things. It is far more disturbing to him that Faith would have shared such a personal thing with her husband, and not him. After all, he is the man that watches her back and he needs to _know_ these things. He needs to know when she needs that extra minute before heading out, or if she needs to have an extra second to focus her sights or, hell, if she just needs an extra laugh before facing a horror; things that—he believes, and maybe rightly—only he, her partner, can provide.

Bosco has always believed that. He has always held a strong belief that only a cop can truly understand another cop. And when discussing partners, this understanding goes even deeper. He has heard of stories from other officers of partnerships going on for decades, barring only deaths, promotions and transfers, and the idea gives him a measure of comfort that nothing else ever has. Partners do not keep things from each other.

"Everything else in your life can go to hell," he once heard an older officer say in the showers, a chorus of 'hear, hear's' following. "But your partner; shit. That is fuckin' _forever_ man."

Faith is his partner; she is his partner and she kept a big fucking secret from him.

He wants to die.

**

* * *

**

**5. for want of a life / a knife was lost (3)**

_You're supposed to tell me shit like this_, he wants to say but he can't move the words past the rage balling up in his throat. The feeling is circular, if anger can be made into a shape. It circles from _she didn't tell me_, to _she could have killed me_, to _she told fucking _Fred, to _she didn't tell me_ and begins all over again, feeding on itself like a double-headed serpent, ever ending and ever beginning.

"Boz," she beseeches, reaching out a hand to him, blue-eyed and treacherous. "I just didn't want anybody—"

"_I am not anybody_," he roars, startling both of them; her hand falls, useless, back to her side. Ashamed, he looks away. He hadn't wanted to yell; he hadn't wanted any of his actions to be beyond his iron-clad control. Not at a time when he so desperately craves it.

His hands are now trembling so badly he needs grab onto something to steady himself; his fists dissolving. Red-faced, he busies himself with his shirt, clenching the cotton blend in a way it is not meant to be clenched, and pretends that he is not where he is, having the conversation that he is. He looks down and away as she gapes at his outburst, at him, because he doesn't want to meet her eyes with his own, letting them betray him, and her. He grits his jaw so hard that he can hear his jaw pop and the subtle parting of fabric between his fingers. It takes a conscious effort on his part to release the cloth in his hands.

"_Boz_," she tries again; reaches out a pale hand as he violently struggles one-armed into his jacket. He ignores her, jams his feet into his boots blindly and knots the laces sloppily, slams his locker door with a satisfying clang. Bosco finds a petty sort of pleasure in ignoring Faith, and he wants to maintain it for as long as possible.

Nevertheless, he is forced to look in her face when he turns, for she is standing in the goddamn doorway (the only one in the locker room because some stupid fucking city planner never thought beyond his own paycheck and didn't make more than one exit for situations like these) and he needs to go past her to leave.

Bosco is not a coward, not by any means (he's been called foolhardy more than once though he has never been too sure why), but his knees threaten to buckle on him as he turns to face Faith's eyes, bright and timid and painfully blue to look at framed by listless strawberry-blonde hair. _Come on and say something,_ he thinks bitterly. _Apologize. Take it back._

When he sees nothing is forthcoming, he shudders inside and forces himself to walk coolly past her, though he really feels everything but cool. He is alight. He is red-hot, melting, and he doesn't know how to make it reverse. He wants to stop and stare at her; to peel apart her skin and skull and peer into the murky depths of her mind and figure out just what the hell is going on inside her head.

He doesn't; can't. He is still furious with her—_she nearly got me_ killed_ today_, he reminds himself harshly when his footsteps waiver for a second, _mustn't forget that little thing_—and he doesn't wanted to make the effort he knows it will take him to try and understand her convoluted logic. He does not, as per usual (because when it's late and dark and the streets are shiny with ice or rain, he just doesn't like the idea of her walking out there alone), offer her a ride home.

Because after all, he is just anyone.

**

* * *

**

**6. A Million Miles**

His mother always told him, at least when she wasn't sick with tears and drink, or mute from his father's rough attentions; 'Maurice, oh Moe my boy, don't you know? Haste always makes waste.'

"Never a truer saying Ma," Bosco mutters resentfully. He regrets his hasty departure almost immediately after leaving the stationhouse and Faith, and an hour has not changed the guilt eating a hole through his stomach one iota.

Hundreds of thousands of questions bubble up from the angry pit of his gut; he wants to ask why she hadn't told him before, and if she ever planned on telling him at all. He wants to ask why she would share this thing with Fred (her _husband_, he reminded himself while tempering his outrage; he is her husband) and not with him. He wants her to explain why she felt Fred's knowledge of this was more important than his. _His_: the man who watches her back. He knows, logically, that there is no way around Fred not knowing—they live together after all—but it _hurts_ to think that she kept such a secret from him willfully. He'd thought, believed, that after so many years together Faith trusted him at least that much.

Which she doesn't, obviously.

This is what had gotten to him the most he realizes, reflecting back on the incident in the locker room, while sitting in his car outside her apartment building. Faith tells him that she had kept this big fucking secret from him, and then she just stands there afterwards, like it is no big deal, like it didn't matter in the least. That is what had gotten to him, and what he couldn't get over.

Still, there is a niggling thought in the back of his mind; what did he do to cause this? Because it has to be his fault in some form or manner, and it scares him to think about it.

What did I do? What did I screw up? How do I fix this?

He groans aloud, throwing his head back against the headrest of his seat and pounds his fist on the flesh of his thigh, hoping against hope that a physical pain will distract him from the emotional ache he feels.

He shouldn't have walked away. He should have been able to look her in the face and understand. Fuck. Guilt coils like an adder in his throat; he'd been _angry_ at Faith for telling him that she had … Not been well.

No matter how angry he is, she doesn't need his crap right now.

**

* * *

**

**7. hook/crook **

He feels like a bit of a pervert.

Bosco is sitting outside Faith's apartment in his car. An almost overwhelming feeling of guilt that is blithely wending its way through his veins, compelling him to try to find his partner to apologize or to, to do _something_. Anything, as long as it alleviates his guilty conscious. He thinks that he might tell her that though he doesn't understand (he will never understand because there is absolutely nothing to understand; Bosco is very firm with himself about this. There is no problem. There is no trouble. Denial in its greatest form.), he still cares for her. And, damn it, he worries about her. She needs to tell him this sort of stuff, otherwise—

He is always worried about her and right now that worry is mixing with a hundred other emotions, creeping insidiously along his bones, multiplying exponentially in their marrow. Bosco is a man of actions, not words. If something is hurting, destroy it. If something is troubling, ignore it. This situation is one that he has not often come across, mostly because he prides himself on a 'scorched-earth' sort of policy in regards to arguments, and it's driving him insane. He never apologizes, but he never really brings it up again either. Faith knows this, he thinks. But he also thinks; she deserves better.

So he feels like a pervert, and a moron, because who else would sit in their car outside of someone's home, at only God-knows what hour of the night (or morning, as he assumes it now is), because he is chicken-shit scared. It's astounding, he finds, how much effort he must put into working up the courage to travel the few flights of stairs to Faith's door and apologize to her (like any decent human being would and because he is not his father).

He is chilled, and exhausted, and achy. He wants to go home and sleep and never have to face Faith and her articblue eyes ever again. That is what he wants to do, and he never gets to do what he wants to do.

Burying his face in his hands he hisses, scrubs sore eyes with sweaty palms, and thinks; _I am going to go up to her apartment and tell her I am a jackass._ That's what he is going to do. He is a paragon of resolution.

"Right," he says not making a single move to get out of the car.

He breathes deeply and makes himself reach out and grip the chill metal handle of the door.

Suddenly, he's standing in front of the building doors, crystalline clouds of mist puffing from his lungs raggedly. It isn't so late, he sees. Well, for him it isn't so late; for any normal person it is well past any reasonable hour to be awake and thinking at all rationally. He will need to be stealthy; he is certain Faith's neighbors won't appreciate being woken up.

Bosco thinks his heart might very well leap out of his throat.

As he makes his way up the stairs (very, very slowly), he tries to think of what he might say and of how he might say it. He thinks that he might have a heart attack trying to get up to her door. He thinks about turning around and going back down and driving away. He'll see her tomorrow, he knows, and he can just try to tell her then.

But he won't, and he knows it. He knows that unless he says something tonight, he never will. He will brush off any concern or trepidation Faith might show him and pretend like nothing has happened. If anything, he might ask in a gruff, unconcerned voice if she is, you know, _okay_, but that's it. This is what will happen; he knows. He feels it from the crown of his head down to the soles of his shoes. Faith, he knows without the smallest doubt, deserved more than that from him.

Even so, there is a moment where he turns around and looks back the way he came; no one knows he's here, so it won't be like anyone missed him …

There have been very few times in his life where he actually though he might not be able to hold his stomach, without the aid of a lot of alcohol; it is a very short list. This is climbing high on that list.

"Give it up," he mutters churlishly. "It's nothing. Be a man."

So he screws up his courage to its sticking-place and does not turn back.

**

* * *

**

**8. and marriage and death and division (4)**

When Bosco was eight, he was taken by his father to the Zoo. At the time any trip with his father was a rare, highly sought-after treat, and he remembers how he and Mikey (who had been only five at the time) had whispered excitedly in the musty cab that had been called to pick them up.

Truthfully, he isn't much of an animal lover; never has been. But by God, he would have been mad about any furry, creepy-crawly, scaly things if it would have garnered him just a shred more of his father's time and attention. Mikey was, as most children are, fascinated by anything that moved. Ma called him her little monkey. Pa didn't usually go for nicknames, unless he wanted something.

Bosco was eight the first time he went to the Zoo, and he hadn't wanted to step into the reptile house. It wasn't so much the animals themselves that frightened him, but the dim musty cave that housed them. Enclosed on all sides by cement and glass, images of what might happen should anything get loose while they were inside plaguing him with a sudden bout of claustrophobia. Mikey had clung stickily to his hand, eyes widening as he sensed his older brother's anxiety.

His father was not amused. _Suck it up,_ he'd growled in his whisky-damaged baritone. _It's nothing. Be a man._ They never got into the reptile house, and they returned home shortly after. Their father didn't invite them out again. Bosco was always ashamed that it had been his childishness that had cut the trip short, and had always wondered what would have happened if he had sucked it up and been brave.

Twenty-two years later, he is standing on the steps of the snake house again. And his courage has almost fails him for the second time. Even as he raps lightly on her door, panic flushes through him just as he lowers his hand, telling him to run the fuck away and _hide_; to bolt back down the way he came and let Faith or whoever answers the door to think that it's just some prankster.

Before he is can act on these thoughts however, the door opens and he can not run. He blinks rapidly, blinded for a moment by the bright light beaming from the open doorframe, and feels a mixture of relief and disappointment smash over him. It is not Faith who answered his knock, and Fred looks just as putout upon opening the door as Bosco feels having knocked upon it.

The older man stands there with a brooding glare on his face, as though he has somehow telepathically caught the younger man's thoughts about running away before the door opened. Bosco coughs, face going red, then white, trying to grasp the courage he'd thought already mustered. They both stand there awkwardly for a moment; Fred in sweatpants, bare feet, and a loose, faded T-shirt, and Bosco in civvies, hands jammed into his pockets to hide their nervous clenching and unclenching, shifting uneasily on his feet.

"What do you want," Fred demands with weary baldness. Bosco's mind goes blank; language is lost to him in face of such directness. "Well?" Impatience creeps unmistakable into the older man's voice.

"Uh, I—" His voice falters slightly, unsure of what or how to answer such a question from the man who is his partner's husband and who clearly does not want him here. "I … Just came to make sure Faith got home okay," he mutters finally, opting for a half-truth instead of a complete lie (and besides, it's none of Fred's damn business what he wants with Faith). The other man gives a snort of pure derision.

"She's not here." Fred's voice is so flat and hard and sharp-edged that Bosco almost wants to check his face for a wound; he thinks he may be bleeding. Then he pays attention to the words.

"What?" First he starts, surprised, then he begins to get that sinking feeling that one only gets when they've screwed up but it isn't common knowledge. Yet. Fred shrugs, though hostility is still very evident in both his face and posture.

"_I_ thought she was still at the precinct," he rumbles, emphasizing the '_I_' as to illustrate that he is not part of the loop.

Since when is there a _loop_?

Since when is he in it?

The older man is still examining the plains of Bosco's face with shrewd brown eyes. The missing, _'with you,'_ remains unspoken and as clear as glass between them. Something in that glance wakes up what he can only call his alpha male tendencies.

"Oh." He murmurs and tries to sound nonchalant. He really does. But the curious mixture of disappointment, elation, and just good old testosterone (serves you right you pushy bloody bastard), churns pleasantly in his belly leaving him feeling strangely pleased in general, and manages to leak into his tone. The male ego picks the oddest times to assert it self.

"Yeah, oh."

"Well," he gives the other man a brilliant, wintry smile, gathering himself to leave, and hesitates. He is tempted to ask how Faith has been doing since she'd … found out—because he knows she'll never tell him and he'll never ask her—but doesn't. He doesn't want Fred to know just how little he actually knows. "Well, I'll see her tomorrow, I guess—"

"She finally told you, didn't she?" Fred interrupts; both face and tone carefully blank, though Bosco thinks can hear satisfaction liming that gravely voice. He stares for a moment; exhales softly, carefully. An upsurge of bald-faced jealousy makes him try to choose his words cautiously. _Fred_ has known from the beginning.

"Yeah, she did." His voice sounds tight, despite his best efforts. Fred gives him a dense stare. Part of him thinks that this is absurd, this man is crazy and what the hell does Faith see in this guy anyway? Bosco is tired, and it's too late or too early depending how you look at things. And Faith isn't here, so he doesn't want to be here either. He tries for a graceful exit. "Ah, Fred, sorry to bother you, I just …" He scowls faintly. "Look, you don't need to mention that I came by when she gets—"

"You just don't understand anything at all, do you?" Fred interrupts him for the second time. Bosco begins to bristle at the condescension in the words; there's that male ego again.

"Screw you," he hisses heatedly, keeping his voice low; it's a school night after all and the kids should be in bed. "I think I get her a helluva lot better than you do. She's my _partner_—"

"And she's my _wife_, though she'd follow you to hell and back."

Both men are struck dumb for a moment; it is one thing to just know something like that, but it is an entirely other thing to admit it. Fred exhales harshly, seeming to deflate. There is a look on the other man's face that he recognizes, even if he isn't sure from where.

"I don't know why," Fred adds resentfully, but in a tired sort of way. "But she would. Do you even realize that?"

He honestly doesn't know how to answer the question, so he doesn't even try. Even though Bosco is not the most moral man in the world, he has never been able to play poker and he has never really been able to lie. Instead he thinks of Faith's pale hair knotted low on her neck, and her calm ocean-eyes looking directly into him and her husky timber saying to the judge _it was me it wasn't his fault he didn't do anything wrong I was the one who let them go it was my fault._

(Undone, he simply sits mute watching the macabre scene play out. Faith hadn't told him what she was going to say; he assumed it was to be the truth and with it the loss of any chance he (they, really, because he knew that she wouldn't go anywhere without him just as he her) had at advancement; the whole three strikes and you're out thing. Instead she saves him; she lies and she saves him. The girl and her mother are sitting across the isle, the girl careful not to look at the man who failed her so very magnificently and he returns the gesture for much the same reason; the mother stares at him so hard he can feel it in his jaw, like a smile held too long. Only they three know that the pale woman on the stand is lying through her teeth, and each is waiting for the other to stand up and cry false. None of them do, he because it's too quick and the case is closed and oh god what did he just let happen; they because justice really is blind so long as the child's pound of flesh is extracted. Faith gives it with a steadysick smile, for him always.)

He is not much of a liar, but Faith is a master and it kills him.

When the silences finally drags on too long, Fred fists his hands and leans on his doorframe; there is so much that Bosco doesn't _know_ trapped in the other man's dark gaze that part of Bosco longs to pluck those brown orbs from Fred's balding head and find out just what it is he doesn't know yet. Fred's sneer is indolent; "I thought as much.

"Look Boscorelli," he continues, almost conversationally. "I don't like you. And I sure as hell don't see whatever saving grace it is that Faith thinks she sees in you. An egotistical piece of shit is still a piece of shit to me," Fred sort of smiles, but Bosco is too, too _something_ to take the offence he normally might. "If I had my way you wouldn't be her partner any more.

"But," he says slowly, and Bosco can hear brittle bitterness fracturing the words. "I can't have my way."

The ground beneath him is shaky at the moment but he asks anyway, grasping desperately for anything that the older man is willing to give. "What's your point?" _What do you get out of this? What do you want me to say, to do? What's the fucking catch?_

Fred looks away, still half-smiling a little. "No point. Just curious about what might be in you that she could care about. Not much, from what I can see." The accuracy of the older man's parting shot is deadly and he closes the door in Bosco's face with a click that rings of finality.

It strikes him then; that look he'd seen in Fred's hard face. It is the same look that his mother always got when he told her that Pa promised, this time, he _promised_, even though the promise had already been broken. Defeat. Pity. Anger, disappointment. Acceptance.

Oh _Jesus_.

Bosco just stands there for a moment while those last words reverberate within the (entirely too small, he decides) confines of his skull. He resists the childish urge to kick at the door out of spite, but only just barely, and instead channels the influx of useless energy into bounding back down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He concentrates on the feel of his feet slapping down, on the bite of his shoes on his feet, to quell the raising buzz of his thoughts. Bursting free of the building, he sprints across the street to his car, slipsliding on the ice-frosted asphalt, nearly breaking his neck in his reckless speed to get away.

He skids into the side of the mustang (his pride and joy; sleek and black and fully loaded. If there is one thing in the world he loves with no restriction it is this car) and drapes himself limply on the frame, breath ragged, hot, head lolling on the frost-laced roof.

When he stands, chest heaving eyes stinging, he looks back once at the butternut-yellow square of light gracing the darkened structure he came from. He swallows, or at least tries to, before wheeling back to his car, viciously kicking at the front right tire.

He strikes out two or three more times (each time harder than the last; finally the ache in his foot matches the ache in his breast), muttering a litany of curses under his breath. He struggles to get his keys out of his pocket, hands white-knuckled and wishing that he smoked if only for something to hold onto, before flinging himself into the driver's seat and slamming the door. Inside, he is calmer; able to think a little. For how long he sits there, idly staring out the windshield and tempering his urge roar aloud in ire, he isn't sure. His hands clench around the wheel, itching with the desire to break something. He wants to feel the satisfaction of a solid object twisting and crumbling and falling into tiny pieces underneath his grip.

_To hell and back I don't know why do you know why not much I can see—_

"Fuck," he says feverishly, twisting his fingers around the steering wheel to prevent them from doing damage to the dashboard. "God damned fuck fucking _hell!_"

He has no idea why he was so furious. Nor does he know whom exactly the rage is directed at: Faith for her deception, Fred for his spite, or himself for his blind, all-assuming arrogance.

**

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**

**9. BlackBlue**

Night and morning close around him like a black leather fist—chill and soft and slick. He is on his twenty-fourth or so hour without sleep/coffee/rest and that's just fucking fine by him because he can handle anything he doesn't need anything (anyone) he is just _fan-fucking-tabulas_. He jams key into ignition and revs the engine into life. He peels away from the sidewalk with a burst of speed that would have had him on his ass in a second flat, had he been on shift and, well, there at the moment. He is not a heavy drinker, but right now he craves gin, and vodka, rum, whisky, or, oh lord the heavysweet sting and slide of good bourbon (not necessarily in that order and not necessarily all of them, just whatever will get him wasted fastest) with the urgency of a booze hound dry for days. And oh fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. He turns too sharply, thinks he might have clipped his bumper on something, and wishes that he was a religious man because confession seems like a damn fine idea at the moment. He can see it now; _forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been thirty years since my last confession_ (fuck, yeah. There is no way in hell). Wild laughter bounces around the car from somewhere and it takes him a second to recognize the sound of his own voice and the cackle disintegrates into something entirely too close to a sob, though a dry, wracking one, the sound of metal on metal; knives on rust. He needs to do something. Dammit, he doesn't know what it is, but he needs _something_. He needs, he needs; he always, always _needs_. He speeds heedlessly down narrow streets without looking at the streetsigns as though the devil himself followed. Wheels spinning and nowhere to go, he races through the city running from a shapeless, nameless something sitting on his shoulder with ocean-ice eyes, hopeless and never escaping.

**

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**

**10. she doth depart (5)**

The precinct is his home away from home; he spends more time within the painted cinderbrick walls than in his own apartment. By now he has spent enough of his life wandering the halls fore and aft shift that he knows ever crook and cranny intimately (in more than one sense of the word, as several of his exes could attest). He is not really a sentimental man, but he loves this building, these walls; every weary corridors.

So he really isn't surprised when he lifts from his near psychotic state to find himself within a block of the stationhouse. It simultaneously calms and incenses him. This is ground zero for his meltdown, which some would say is a long time in coming and he would say hasn't even started yet. And what the hell? He says to himself; what the hell, and crosses three lanes of traffic and skids to a stop in front of the building (besides, he needs to get his watch anyway; he left it in his locker). He ignores several curious stares directed at his back by some of the on-duty officers he recognizes; he can feel a hole being drilled between his shoulders as he stalks to the locker room and back.

There is a wild feeling about him, and everyone around can tell. He feels savage, violent, and he almost _wants_ to start a fight (something, believe it or not, he doesn't often like to do. Not to say if a fight is offered, he won't take it). A fight, or something like it; anything, really, that will relieve the awful tension building up his chest, birthed there after his conversation with Fred. He feels as tightly coiled as a garrote, and twice as sharp.

"What're you doing here Boscorelli?" The sandy-haired night clerk (Fisher, he recognizes after a moment, helped by the tag the other man is wearing) queries curiously, thumbing through a magazine. "You're not on duty yet …?" Bosco thinks about ignoring the nosy man, but part of him remembers that Faith isn't home and part of him remembers that he didn't offer her a ride. Maybe, maybe—No. But, still, the man might know if Faith is still in the building. A good enough reason for asking, because he doesn't want to, you know, bump into her unexpectedly; that would be awkward (and he hates her so much at the moment that he will not be responsible for anything he says to her).

"Yokas leave yet?" He asks brusquely, not meeting any eyes. Fisher looks faintly interested, but what he can make out on Bosco's face is enough for him to pretend like everything is roses. He shrugs.

"Yeah, a while back, when I got on shift, but she left, I think." He replies easily. "Looked kinda tried." He glances at the clerk harshly, guilt eating at his insides. The look is not lost on Fisher, just misinterpreted. "Why? You need Yokas for … somethin'?" Vague innuendo drips from his words. It's easy to see what he's asking.

Bosco's lip pulls back in a sneer, because he has been fielding questions like this from the time he first partnered with Faith in the academy and it's easier to ignore them than to argue, but he has to restrain himself from saying something antagonistic (_fuck off!_).

"Whatever," he mutters; palms itching for a fight (_fuck the bloody hell off!_). Officer Fisher just stares at him oddly before shrugging again, faintly disappointed, and turning back to his magazine. Bosco manages to get his watch and get out of the precinct with out starting anything stupid. He flings himself sullenly into his mustang, slams the door resoundingly.

Faith, if she had been present, would have been proud. She's always telling him to watch his mouth.

**

* * *

**

**11. you'd make a graceful thief (6)**

Ten years ago, he would have not been this upset. Ten years ago, he was twenty and imbued with that awful, smug arrogance all twenty-year-olds seem to possess. Ten years ago he does not yet know Faith. Ten years ago he is freshfaced and eager, and entering the Academy because it is something that he has also wanted to do, in some vague form or manner.

And here he is, doing what he always wanted to be doing. Unlike Faith, he never had any other aspirations. Unlike Faith, he knew this was, is, it. He knows.

And that is how he notices her. Well, part of it, anyway. He notices her firstly, because she is a female, and even in this day and age the majority of cops end up being male, and secondly because, well, she is a _girl_. A pretty girl too, but he keeps this observation to himself. In a class of dozens, she stands out to him like no one has done for years and he tells himself to get a fucking life.

Anyway, he notices her because she is a girl. But he also notices her because she is artless. He can see her being anything, this tranquil woman, and he wonders what she's doing here training to be a cop. Faith is quiet, calm, centered; she does not say what she does not mean, and she doesn't play games if she is not interested. And she can't aim to save her life.

"Here," he huffs finally, eliciting strange looks from the others around, as he repositions her hands on her revolver. He's been watching her struggles with target practice for several lessons now and is finally feed up. "And here; don't aim for the target, aim for a few centimeters above the target. You'll be sure to get a hit then."

She looks at him suspiciously from under soft honeybrown bangs; "What do you want?" Bosco is not surprised that she is cautious. A girl (a pretty girl, perhaps especially) is not always treated with the appropriate political correctness, he's noticed. Teasing and the 'I'll help you, but' are common. No, he is not surprised she's wary because she's right.

"Nothing! Well, something."

"It's always something."

"No, no—not _that_ something. I just, ya know, thought you needed help."

"And?"

"And, well, see; I'm good at this stuff. You're good at the book stuff."

Her lips twist, but there's a twinkle in her eye. She's older than he thought initially but not that old. Older, like that girl-next-door-in-college-when-he-is-still-in-high-school older, not _old_. "This is your oblique way of asking for help, isn't it?"

"And this is your oblique way of saying yes, isn't it?" Her laugh startles him, but in a good way.

They are inseparable for the rest of their stint in the academy, and he is oddly disappointed to learn that rookies need to ride with tenured officers for _forever_ before they get to request their own car, and their own partner. Faith just laughs at him; tells him it's not the end of the world so shut up.

"But you got _Sullivan_," he objects. "We know Sully. I get a stranger."

"Well, do you want to go with Sully? 'Cause we can request to change—"

"Hell no; Sully and me, we don't get along, you know that." He doesn't add that he doesn't get along with any one too well, except her, and she doesn't add that she's the only one that can put up with him for long. Instead she reminds him that it's only for a while.

And really, it is. Time flies by and he and she are no longer rookies and they have 55-David and he drinks his coffee black and makes sure to get half half (because the break room never gets cream, or even milk, and the little corner store that they usually stop at only has those small big-as-a-dimple creamers) for hers, though he doesn't know how she can abide that crap. And it is routine and normal, and he goes to sleep at night because he knows there is something _steady_ and _constant_ in his life; someone steady, constant. In a good way this time because there is a consistency to an alcoholic, just not the good kind of consistency.

This is all Faith's fault, he thinks savagely, if she had just _told_ him in the first place—but she hadn't. And now everything has been shot to hell. She hadn't wanted to dump her problems on _anybody_.

"I'm not anybody," he explodes finally, voice ringing stridently in his ears, and he gives a stinging slap to the steering wheel with an open-palm. _"I'm not just fucking anybody."_

He needs something. Beer, he thinks swiftly, but then discards the thought just as fast. He doesn't want to forget (and, though he won't admit it, he doesn't want to risk something that sounds so much like what his father would do); he just wants to do something that will occupy him for more than a minute. Something physical, because that's always been a good way to clear his mind, and right now he needs one made of crystal. A run he thinks, inspired, and he pulls away from the curb eagerly. Rubber squeals, asphalt melts.

Yeah, a run in the park; _this_ will calm him. Except—he nearly slams on the breaks. His hands are bloodless, bone and tendon stark though his skin where they grip the wheel.

He thinks of running, and he thinks of Faith. He thinks of running with Faith between classes when classes were in the day, sun blistering tarmac and skin, shadows shifting like waves on the sea. He thinks of her face, flushed pink from exertion and heat, hair (brown then; the color of sugar cane and his hands itched to see if it was as soft as it looked) curling darkly with sweat and sticking to her forehead, her cheeks. Gulping water, she glares at him and spits out, "Jock."

He laughs, kicks air, joyous. "You're just outta shape."

"No, you're a jock. Creep. Shut up."

"Faith can't run; Faith can't keep up," he teases because he likes the spark kindling in her cobalt eyes and the red on her cheeks; he likes her sputtering indignantly. He dances around her on the balls of his feet, still feeling fresh, and tugs a piece of her ponytail; shocks shiver down his flesh, his fingertips graze the nape of her neck. She swats at him and he resists the urge to rub his fingertips together, dancing out of reach.

"Stop that you dork."

"You're just out of shape," he repeats coming to a stop. He eyes her lazily adding, "Not that it's a bad shape." There is silence suddenly; his throat feels like a desert. Faith tilts her head a little, considers something. He stretches quickly and looks away. Pretending.

"What I am is married," Faith says humorously, putting away her water bottle and striding past him, easing into a soft, loping pace. She glances over her shoulder at him, once, and tosses back; "You do remember that, right?"

He never forgets it, but he does ignore it. And it's very easy to ignore.

And it is ridiculously easy to find a parking spot near the park; he wishes that it were this easy all the time, then he might run more. Fear of random act (and not so random acts, as he well knows) violence has almost completely eliminated the number of people willing to go out in the witching hours. There is, of course, the occasional teenager hanging around. He sees them hiding in the shadows of the gnarled pillars of trees, behind low-lying shrubbery, and draped like pale sheets over bits and piece of bare lawn; but they are sparse. The walkways are well-nigh empty, giving him unobstructed distances to run.

He slams his door with unnecessary force before stretching his shoulders and back to get rid of any kinks (he yelps and hisses when he does, having forgotten the wound in his shoulder, it has seen fit to remind him of it's presence with a vengeance). He doesn't run—at least not at first—instead he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets to protect them from the nocturnal chill that he can now feel; Bosco is willing to swear that he's been up for at least twenty-four hours now and exhaustion is setting in. He walks slowly; leisurely, as if he is trying to enjoy the murky scenery he passes.

But gradually his walk turns into a rushed walk, and then a jog, and then a full-out sprint. He exults in the smooth flow of his muscles under chilled skin, and he feels a grin threaten to quirk his lips, and for a while he is only aware of movement and cold and nothing else.

Then he becomes aware of the subtle burning in his shoulder. He slows to nurse it and eventually he just walks. His chest feels tight too; he grimaces knowing that he shouldn't have run like that. He's going to pay for this little jaunt in the morning, but it feels worth it. And at any rate, anything is worth being rid of the anger and the guilt that still lurked somewhere inside him. Bosco wishes suddenly that Faith had been home so he could have spoken with her; could have apologized for his behavior; could have told her that he is her partner and nothing is going to change that. Nothing, not ever.

He bows his head, breath an insubstantial halo.

**

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**

**12. he said, cut off your hands (7)**

Though his feet have slowed, they have not stopped, and—looking at his surroundings now—Bosco realizes (briefly and oddly unsurprised) that they have unwittingly led him almost half way across the park, almost back to Faith's. He can see the bridge that crosses to the playground (the one Faith used to take her kids to years ago; sometimes he trailed along because Emily and Charlie were always happy to see their Uncle Bosco. He isn't loath to admit that he enjoyed those trips almost as much as they did—these memories are some of his favorite, and he will often pull them out, like a dog-eared photograph, at the smell of green cut grass, sticky cherry popsicles and dust) and beyond the bridge is the eerie lemon phosphorescence of streetlights.

Faith sometimes cuts across the park when she walks home after a shift, particularly when she's late and in a hurry. It pissed him off enough, before all this shit had happened, because she is a cop, she bloody well _knows_ what goes down in places like this in the wee hours of the night. And for a woman—even a cop, _especially_ a cop ("You're going to get yourself killed one of these days," he snarls. "You worry too much; lighten up, I can handle myself," she scoffs, ignoring him)—to walk through them, alone, at _night_; well, it's just downright stupid. It's going up to trouble and asking for its phone number. It got to the point where he offered her a ride home because otherwise she'd walk, and the idea of her out there in the park at night, _alone_, did not sit well with him. And her place isn't so out of his way. And he is swift to remind her that she is on her own getting to work; he is not her chauffeur.

It's worse now, as he thinks about it. What if she gets sick again, out here, with no one around but creeps and freaks and junkies looking for a fix? What then? The more he mulls the scenario over in his mind, the more furious he becomes. This is just like something she would do, he hisses from behind clenched teeth. One would almost think it's to spite him, because she has got to realize just how much worry she causes him; she'll send him to an early grave at this rate. Stupid fucking Faith; it would be just like her to not call a cab and to walk, even when she is unwell. Soon he is stalking down the path (keeping an experienced eye open for untoward movements) seething, and looking specifically for a tallish woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a denim backpack.

He remembers when she dyed it blonde, about three years ago; she leaves him at the end of shift with warm brown tresses and returns the next day with cool golden locks knotted at her neck. It causes quite a stir. Sully teases her (something about her wanting to get free coffee and doughnuts, or some bull) and there is enough friendly wolf-whistling to make him understand why some women hate it.

"Why the hell did you turn blonde on me?" Bosco is entirely disgruntled. He eyes her hair with a dissatisfied look; he misses the brunette hue. And the itch in his fingers has no lessened; instead, now, he wants to see if her hair will slid around his hand like the sun-warmed water it resembles. He sticks his hands in his pockets. Faith shrugs.

"I was fair-haired in high school for a while, and I felt like a change." She tucks a loose strand behind her ear. He feels her look at him, and then away. She adds very softly, "And Fred always liked me as a blonde."

Bosco remembers this, and thinks that it's funny that even now, when he remembers those words, he gets a little twinge in his chest. It almost feels like he is trying to breathe, but there is a metal strap constricting his chest. But because there is no strap, and there is no reason for a strap—metal or otherwise—he pushes the feeling down and away, and pretends that it's the cold or exhaustion or something else entirely.

Because even he knows nothing good can come of it.

So he pauses on the bridge spanning the man-made creek that wends its way across the indigo nightscape and _pushes_. Ruthlessly, bitterly, he pushes and pushes until he can feel something in him give and swallow up his unwanted thoughts. He surveys his surroundings with a feeling of triumph (see Pa? _See_?), and decides he likes the way the faintly greenish moonlight gilds the landscape in a delicate aqua, removing any trace of ruin and leaving behind only beauty.

Everything has a slightly fuzzy hue to it, like an out of focus photograph. The playground in particular seems to take on a look of mystique; the playing apparatuses take on the appearance of huge animals and dimly-lit brownie houses. Chimeras dance like deer shadows at the edge of his eyes. Part of Bosco feels that he has stepped out of reality and into a gothic fairytale; he is Hansel wandering the woods looking for his Gretel. He is the wolf waiting for red-ridinghood. He shivers, his flesh cooling, chilled by the faint sweat he worked up and the winter air.

And the air is a solid thing, weighted and furred and clawed, possessing the space between him and playground, between him and Faith, with the stillness of a great cat. Irony has never been his strong suit, but even something as blatant as this is not lost on him.

He was right.

Faith had decided to walk home; not that he hadn't really expected some such nonsense from her—she could be so very dense. But even on foot, she should have made it to the warmth of her home by now, had she not decided to lounge around in the park at night.

Sitting there, in the maze of shadows, Faith takes on an otherworldly look, becoming a becoming a precariously seated alabaster statue where she perches on the back of a bench—svelte form taunt and arced like a bow.

He can tell that she isn't paying attention. He can see it in the way she leans forward, eyes not on her surroundings but turned inward.

He's seen _that_ look before. More often than not he is the cause of the look, or at least he thinks it's him, because she only really gets it around him. He asked her about it, once. Faith, all vague and distant, had merely smiled. It bothered him, not because she wasn't sharing (hoo-boy; _were_ there some things that he could live a whole life-time without ever knowing about her. He didn't need to know _everything_, after all), but because she wasn't sharing with him. It sounded roundabout, even to him, and he had no way of explaining around it. And all of it fucking bothered him.

(So, instead, he pushed: "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Faith slanted an almost amused glance in his direction: "Less than's wrong with you."

He huffed, unhappy and frustrated: "You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?"

She got that goddamned look again, just when he thought he'd shaken her out of it: "Yeah, I know.")

**

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**

**13. Silent as Despairing Love (8) **

"What is your favorite memory?"

He wants to answer truthfully, wants to say; _this, you, now_, but he is so not comfortable with the truth. "I don't have a great recollection for stuff like that."

Faith doesn't smoke, and neither does he, but looking at her sitting across the table from him in the little twenty-four hour Diner they frequent, he thinks that it would suit her. A cigarette in one hand, smoke curling whitely around her face, her dark-ringed eyes she looks like something from the movies a long time ago—full of stately vulnerability, and tough as nails. He has a flash of her spread out against the garish red of the booth seat; milk on scarlet, blue on black, and he shudders. Faith catches it, looks concerned for all the wrong reasons, but doesn't ask him if he's okay.

"You've gotta have something that you remember that's, I don't know, precious to you."

"Well," Bosco licks his lips burned a little by the coffee, and tries to think of something (something that doesn't involve Faith, or Faith's laugh, or her blue eyes, or her smile, or her daughter). "Well, there was this one time when I was, I dunno, fourteen? Fifteen, maybe. I think it was around thanksgiving. Pa was, I don't c—" a pause, a consideration, "I don't know; somewhere else. So it was just Mikey, me and Ma. She wasn't working at the time."

(He doesn't mention that Ma was spending most of the days closeted in her room, or that he found her too many times to count passed out, a rainbow of pills around her, an empty bottle of gin in her hand. He doesn't mention that Mikey—the stupid little punk, always making trouble for him—was cutting class so bad he was nearly expelled or that he was starting to hang out with the kids that lingered a little too long in alleys and other, darker, places. He doesn't mention that he himself was fast and loose, swiping loose change from his mother's purse and staying out most nights.)

Faith stirs some creamer into her coffee, already a pale chocolate color, and leans on her hand. She's growing her bangs out—she told him the other day 'cause she was complaining about how her hair was always getting in the way at this stage—and it reaches just to her cheeks, a shaggy brown fall. He watches her for a moment, lips curling in a sneer.

"Don't see how the hell you can drink that junk." She raises a dark brow and sips her drink, a small smile hiding behind her bangs.

"You aren't getting out of this that easily; don't try an' change the subject."

He sniffs. "I'm not. Just don't get you sometimes, is all. You tell me yours first."

"But you've already started."

"But _you_ started it."

She laughs and leans back; her neck is a long pale line dipping into her navy sweater, admits defeat. She has magnificent collarbones. "Fine, fine," she grins. "Well, I got two I can think of. That good enough?"

"Go on."

"Okay. Number one would have to be when I was accepted into NYC-U." Bosco is surprised by this. Not so much that she was accepted (because, come on, this is Faith and she can do anything; he's figured out that much in the nearly two years he's known her), but that she lists this as her favorite memory. He wonders if he asks her what her biggest regret is, what she'll say.

"Why didn't you go?"

Faith gets a strange look in her face, not quite bitter, not quite chagrin, not quite happy, but not _not_. "I was stupid. I got pregnant. I … couldn't afford to do both."

"Oh." He thinks of Emily. He thinks of lime suckers, Disney movies (right now her favorite one is sleeping beauty, where the prince and princess meet and fall in love but don't recognize each other for who they really are; he got her the picture book for Christmas and she has dog-eared it all to hell. Not that he minds), and pinksatin ballet slippers. He thinks of the hours that Faith misses with her daughter, and he thinks of hot chocolate on winter days, the three of them sitting on the park bench teeth-chattering, clutching the hot Styrofoam cups between cold fingers. He thinks: what did she give up for this?

Faith looks pensive for another second, before smiling and downing the rest of her murky coffee.

"And number two is when Emily was born." Now that is what he expected to hear. He looks at her face, at the bright smile and the sheen to her eyes, and even though she's happy he feels like he's missing something. "Love at first sight, you know?"

_Yes_. "So now I got to tell mine, right?" He makes himself sound resigned, annoyed, but he smiles to counter it.

"That's right." She's grinning like a Cheshire cat, and he likes that lilt in her voice.

"Okay; the day I got accepted into the Academy." It's true; this is one of his favorite memories, and one of his safest. Even though it had been a horrible week leading up to it. Faith looks puzzled, curious.

"That's not the one you were talking about before."

"Yeah, well, the other one was no good."

Because how can he explain that those years, those years between ten and eighteen were hell; too young to do anything, too old to be helpless. Because that thanksgiving, even though Ma was only semi-lucid and Mikey was fucking around with a bad crowd and Pa was missing, because despite that he got his first job. Shit hours, shit pay, but he got _out_. And if he got out once, he could do it again. And if he got out, then maybe, just maybe, he could get Ma out, if he worked hard enough, and if he tried long enough. Hell, maybe even Mikey too.

(Except he hadn't, he hadn't; Mikey is still out there, only now he is a twenty-something junky, wasted life. Ma is out, but even though he pulled her out, she's dating a prick he knows hits her—she tries to hide it, but he knows and every time he comes to help her she tells him to _stop, everything's fine_ and he wants to cry and tries to pull her out again.)

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"So," Bosco drawls, eyeing her speculatively and pretending that everything is as it should be. His coffee has turned lukewarm, so he adds a spoonful of sugar and looks to see if the waitress is around so he can signal for another cup. "What brought this on?"

"I'm pregnant."

Oh. "Oh." He concentrates very hard on the tabletop, on the beige china of his coffee cup, on his hands and hers across from him. "Does Fred know?"

She twists a corner of her serviette. "No, not yet."

**

* * *

**

**14. we all dig for gold / crumbs and pieces (and logic will break your heart) (9)**

Faith sits stonestill on the edge of the bench-back (legs are neatly gathered onto the bench seat, elbows resting on her knees, hands steepled and pressed to her mouth, he can see that much), with her backpack slumped carelessly beside her, free for any bold thief. Her hair is, has been let loose against her cheeks, raked forward from the base of her skull like she had started to put it into pigtails and had never gotten around to finishing. Faith's shoulders are hunched, and the collar of her thin jean-jacket puckering at her nape to revealing neck: a long expanse of naked flesh, spine, and corded muscle. He thinks that he has never seen a sight more beautiful nor more vulnerable than a strong woman's neck. There is something infinitely fragile about it.

Stupid, _stupid_ woman. He thinks irrationally: she should have a proper coat on, or at least a scarf, because it sure-as-hell isn't summer.

He thinks: he should go over there and demand that she gets home (to her husband, to her children, away from him) with a loud reprimand for lingering in dangerous places without mother-fucking-backup.

He think: he should go and apologize for freaking out and then walk her home. That's what he should do, he thinks.

However, what he _should_ do and what he _can_ do are two entirely different entities.

He doesn't move. Can't; something holds him in place, mutes him. Maybe it is that Faith hasn't noticed his presence yet. Maybe it is the way the night muffles the land, making everything surreally like a painting, or like sitting on the bottom of a pool.

Maybe, maybe he is scared that if he where to go over there she will refuse to acknowledge him—his presence. It's a preposterous thought, but Faith looks so ridiculously far away that he finds himself wondering if he were to go over to her right now, right this minute and touch her knee or grapple with her naked hands pale as stripped pine nuts or cup her face with his own bloodless extremities, would she even recognize him?

He thinks she wouldn't.

So mute he remains, breathing shallowly because some deep addled recess of his primitive consciousness said that any movement or sound will cause her to flee; flicker and disappear like a unicorn before a hunter; like Eurydice before Orpheus. He stands because he doesn't know what to do. He stands there and he watches the woman sitting on the back of the bench, because he is afraid: suddenly, mindlessly afraid.

So he stands there.

He just fucking stands there, hands clenched in pockets, staring wide-eyed and afraid.

**

* * *

**

**15. Nor old deep memories (10)**

His father was a charismatic man. When Bosco was little, and things were almost normal (or at least he thought they were; a child's perspective is always skewed) he can remember sitting on the couch with Pa and watching TV, quietly craving some of his father's intensity to be focused on him for once. He can remember sneaking peeks at his jovial father, in one fist the remote and the other a beer, and wishing more than anything that he would put his large arm around his shoulders and—even now he doesn't know the end to that thought.

He wants and—

Fear of his father's swift, if somewhat unsteady, hand always stalled him. Men didn't cuddle, his father would have sneered; he knew. So he kept his corner, and his tongue, and he watched the television with his father.

He can recognize fear. Even if he doesn't admit to it, he can still recognize it for what it is, and right now he is so fucking terrified that even though he wants more than anything to go over to her and—

Again, he wants, he wants so badly he aches of it, but what he wants he doesn't know. He wants to touch Faith, he wants to badly, but the fear crawling just under the surface of his skin burrows through the tissue of his muscles like parasitic worms, leaving him immobilized. He cannot speak; when he opens his mouth only wisps of smoke came out, his words evaporating quickly into the night around him along with his breath.

It's like being struck by a thunderbolt, nerve-endings melting, solidifying; fusing together in a terrible circuit of inertia. This fear, it lives and breathes in his ribcage, like butterflies moments before you stand on stage to speak and you're not certain you know your lines.

He thinks: this is holding out your heart bleeding in your hands to someone outside yourself and waiting for them to sew it back in, trusting them to do it right.

Bosco wants to speak. He always has. He wants to call out to Faith, sitting on the bench. He wants to got over there and put his arm over her shoulders.

He wants to, but he won't because he never has before.

In some ways, this is worse then when he was a child, finding Ma after his father came home (either by a lack of money, because there was never enough, or because there weren't any bartenders left that would serve his drink), often allowed in by his own hesitant hand. She would just sit there huddled and bruised in the center of the carpet staring at him with flat unblinking eyes, knowing.

("Bambino, _figlio_; my son," Pa slurs, palm pressed to his window. He has never been to Italy, not as far as Moe knows and Pa only wanders into Italian when he's very, very drunk, or very, very angry—which is basically the same thing. Moe's window is the only one that opens to the fire escape, the only one Pa can climb up to. "Aprasi; please—your Madre, she locked the door again and I forgot my keys. Figlio, figlio, let your Padre in?" No Pa, he says at first every time. I am not letting you in when you're like this. You didn't forget your keys. You never do.)

Once Pa was gone again, she never asked him why he'd done it, not once. She never said anything about it, in fact. It always frightened Bosco because he was terrified that one day she would look at him after one of those nights and blame him for it, for hurting her like—

("Aprasi, aprasi," the handsome man tapping on his window murmurs. "Ah, bambino, I'm sorry I scared you; I don't mean it. Aprasi; I'll make it up to you figlio. I promise." You always promise Pa. "Let your Padre in." No Pa. Not this time. "Ahh, but it's so chilly out here! Don't you feel sorry for your poor Pa? I promise I'll be good; I just want to go to bed bambino." But you never do Pa.)

Faith hurt him.

(But he'd hurt his mother over and over and over—)

He hated her; been glad that she trembled when she spoken to him

(He always shook slightly on those mornings-after, when he talked to his mother, wondering if she hated him yet)

He'd just left; there was nothing he wanted to say.

(His mother had always just left the room, quietly and closed-faced, which was worse than all of Pa's words)

**

* * *

**

**16. my love descend (11)**

Faith moves suddenly, releasing her hands from their steeple, allowing one arm to fall limp on her knee. The other she moves to cover her breast, wincing. He wonders if it's the treatments she'd mentioned causing the discomfort, or the—

She rubs her chest and scrunches her face in a faint grimace of pain. A tidal wave of fierce protectiveness breaks over him in a rush; he feels like he's drowning. He _is_ drowning he realizes, trying to draw a breath; he can't breath, he can barely see; he wants to sit down, cower. Emotions slice through him like molten quicksilver; cascading in alternating sheets of rage and self-pity, fear, tenderness, want, hurt, guilt; shame, trepidation and confusion.

_And he just stands there_.

I'm not anybody. He'd said it before, shouted it, but he doesn't think that she understood. He tries to call out to her again, to _explain_—but his mouth just flaps like a fish's; always mute.

(I'm your partner you little idiot; I'm not anybody. _I'm not just anybody_.)

Bosco wants—

Well he isn't sure what he wants. He wants Faith to turn around and say "Hey Boz," like she always does for one thing. And he's afraid she'll turn around and see him, coward that he is, for another. He wants things to go back to the night before and be simple. He doesn't want Faith to be _sick_.

There, he said it.

Faith is sick. Faith has cancer.

It isn't fucking fair.

(What's the punch line? Because this joke just is not funny anymore.)

Another wave of fear wells up in him, a different kind, over-lapping the fear _of_ her is now a fear _for_ her. Fear that he will be helpless again, that he will just have to sit back and watch, that he will some day need a new partner (never, never, never, he chants internally; _never_) either at Faith's request or because she is d—

Faith was so strong, so beautiful, he feels he could have worshipped at her feet, like a fanatic groveling before his God, amply rewarded if she but designed to glance in his direction one more time. She has always been the stronger of the two, he allows in a moment of brutally honest acknowledgment. She has carried this albatross by herself for a long time without his help (Fred, he is sure, had not handled it nearly as well as she; maybe even worse than he did. He can only hope).

She might not need his help; hell, she is probably better off without it, but he wants to help her. He wants to ask her what he can do.

But he can't move; he can't even speak. All he can do is—

(_She's just standing there! She's just fucking stand there!)_

—Stand there and stare at her like an idiot. She hasn't even noticed him; he's pathetic. Resentment rears an ugly head in his chest. Why isn't she paying attention?

He dissolves; she splays her hand openpalmed on her chest and closes her eyes, and tipping her head backwards. Her hair slides back over shoulder, revealing the milk-pale arc of her throat. He watches her throat jump as she swallows (tears, he wonders softly, anger?) blue-white skin moving over the taunt muscles like a layer of silk over steel.

This is Faith—all silk and steel, all water and stone. All bend but not break.

The moment is intimate, private. Bosco feels a flush creep up his neck, hot and ashamed—that single instant of seeing the milky flash of her throat as she breathed, in that one second, she is the single most precious thing he has ever known in his life, and he is a voyeur.

(He wants her to notice him standing in the shadows somewhere beside her. He wants her to notice him more than anything else; more than he has ever wanted anything before. It surpasses desire and borders on an almost anguishing physical _need_ for her to see him. He will debase himself at her feet if that is what's required, but he needs for her to see; to tell him it is alright. He wants things to go back to the way they were; he wants him and Faith to be sitting in George's, drinking coffee and rehashing the events of the day. He wants to take back the look he'd seen on her face when he'd brushed past her without speaking.)

Faith breaks the spell herself, straightening and stretching out; Bosco reaches an involuntary hand towards her. She seems to shake herself, physically ridding herself of an unpleasant thought, and she picks up her backpack and hops off the bench, the moment gone.

Bosco opens his mouth to call out to her, to stop her, but his mind shuts down and he watches Faith dumbly as she leaves the playground without once looking back.

And all he can do is stand there.

(_I didn't want to dump my problems on anybody_.)

"Wait," he calls out softly, as soon as she is out of sight. _I'm not anybody. I'm sorry. I—_

She is well and truly gone. Dawn is bleeding into the sky. Faith will reach home in a few minutes, and he will go back to his car and go home and sleep. And then …

And then …

And then he will go to work, and he will not just stand there.

(_Bosco—they found a lump_.)

That is what is really getting to him; he had just fucking stood there, staring at her wide-eyed. That is what was really getting to him and what he doesn't know if he can get over.

(_They found a lump_.)

The thing that is getting to him the most is the way he'd just stood there. That more than anything else. She is his partner for Christ's sake and he just stood there, clenching his hands in his pockets, staring at her wide-eyed.

**Notes: **

(1) I do not speak Italian, though I'd like to learn. But these are some words that I know. To anyone who actually speaks Italian, I apologize for butchering your grammar and language.

Bambino, child

Figlio, son

Aprasi, open up

Madre, Mother

Padre, Father

(2) Originally, this was called 'Out, out' in reference to Macbeth (because I was trying to draw parallels between the Macbeth/Lady Macbeth dynamic and Bosco/Faith, because Faith is the stronger of the two) but decided that the title no longer fit as well with the rewrite, hence the change.

(3) Am completely and totally clueless to actual ages of peeps in fic. Pure speculation on my part; also good to know, am so totally making stuff up for background info as I go along (though there is some canonical evidence to support most of my crack-induced ideas).

(4) Um, if this fic looks oddly familiar, no you aren't hallucinating and no I haven't plagiarized it. As mentioned, it used to be called 'Out Out—' but what I didn't say is that I have changed my penname since posting the original draft. Several times. And probably will again.

(5) Bosco has issues. Yeah.

**References Inspirations:**

1) Modest Mouse, 'The Ocean Breathes Salty' (http : www . modestmousemusic . com /)

2) The Killers, 'Mr. Brightside' (http : www . islandrecords . com / thekillers / site / home . las)

3) Tom Waits, 'Misery is the River of the World'

4) Algernon Charles Swinburne, 'Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)' (http : eir . library .utoronto .ca / rpo / display / poem2079. html)

5) William Blake, 'Never Seek to Tell thy Love' (http :eir .library .utoronto .ca /rpo /display /poem190 .html)

6) Gregory Maguire, 'Mirror Mirror' (http : www. gregorymaguire. com/)

7) Marge Piercy, 'The friend' (http: eir. library. utoronto. ca/ rpo/ display/ poem1611 .html)

8) William Blake, 'America: a Prophecy Preludium' (http :eir. library. utoronto. ca/rpo /display /poem191. html)

9) The Stills, 'Logic will break your heart' (http :www . thestills . net/)

10) H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 'Leda' (http: eir. library. utoronto .ca/ rpo/ display/ poem687. html)

11) John Donne, 'Elegy IX: the Autumnal' (http :eir .library. utoronto. ca/ rpo/ display/ poem652.html)

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